For Consideration: Rescue - The Embassy Mission

Mon, 06/24/2013 - 4:54pm — joeking97

Rescue - The Embassy Mission is one of the most underrated NES games of all time. It's not a Nintendo legend like Mario or Zelda to be truthful, but it's still enjoyable to play. The concept of the game is that terrorists have hijacked the Paris embassy and it's your job to rescue the hostages. This game has a multitude of things to offer as a game and does quite well at performing them. This game is comprised of three major elements: Side-Scrolling, Sniping, and FPS (First Person Shooter). The game is simplistic in its goals and process, but does its job so eloquently.

Let's first examine the Side-Scrolling feature. The player picks a character and tries to sneak through a platform to get to the embassy. The player must dodge spot-lights by simply staying out of the way or ducking behind something. This kind of side scrolling is really neat for the time because it lets the game have an interactive background and foreground which gives it a new layer of depth. Once the player reaches a certain point the game will automatically go back to the character selection screen to pick a new character. If the player is caught, however, they will be killed in a barrage of bullets and will have another chance to try with a different character.

Do a barrel roll!Peek a boo!
Secondly, let's examine the sniper aspect of the game. Once you get your men through the Side-Scrolling stage you'll get to take a sniper position on the roof. The player looks through a scope and searches his side of the building which is composed of nine windows. Once you see someone in the window you can shoot them and shatter the window. This will decrease the number of terrorists inside, making the rest of the game slightly easier. Be careful though! You only have a limited amount of time to snipe.
Now we move on to next to last stage of the game, getting into the embassy. The men enter the embassy by repelling down the side of the building and smashing through a window. They drop down a few feet and repel just in time or they will fall to their doom.

We now finally move on to the last stage of the game, the assault. A cool part of the game is the inside of the embassy. It uses 2D images in first person perspective and a map layout to simulate as though you're in a 3D environment. Once inside you'll need to track down the terrorists which move from place to place. This is sort of analogous to games like Demon Forge. When you do encounter an enemy you'll need to shoot him or he'll escape or kill you. Be sure not to kill any civilians though!

When you finally clear out all the enemies the game is over and you'll be shown a screen with all your stats: your remaining men, surviving hostages, and how long you took. Pretty simplistic gameplay that has its challenges (Especially repelling down the wall!) and invites replay ability. I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a good NES action title or anyone who wants to have fun!

Yeah, the Amiga version had a little bit more to it, I believe. Not much that really would influence the game, but more none the less. I agree Rainbow Six made a leap in this genre of games. It made it 3D, more extensive, and was a lot of fun. While Rainbow Six is a great game, this is still a great game on its own.

I recall playing it at a friend's house in the late 80s. I had a Nintendo, but I didn't own RESCUE. I loved doing things for no reason - rolling on the ground when there was no spotlight. Diving behind that background wall was awesome. It almost seemed like you could create drama on your own like an action star in a film, and that was something I never experienced to that point in gaming. It could be that the twitch-level of it hasn't been replicated much since the release - I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, but sneaking around in here has much more of an arcade feel.

Thanks for posting this! The game has been in my possession since I started picking up NES games in 1999/2000 as a collector. I may need to load it up soon.